Matthew Pennycook

Mr Speaker, you will forgive me if I do not comment on the specifics of the local planning question, due to the quasi-judicial nature of the role of the Secretary of State in planning applications. We set out transitional arrangements in the NPPF consultation in July for how local plans at regulation 18 and 19 stage will proceed through the system, to ensure that we get up-to-date local plans through where appropriate and meet housing need in terms of the revised standard method that we have put forward. We are determined to get these homes built. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) says that those levels of housing are unsustainable. It will be for the Planning Inspectorate to decide whether the local plan is sound, but I do not take issue in any way with the ambition that the local authority is showing. We have an acute and entrenched housing crisis in this country. Every week in my advice surgery—I am sure that his is the same—people come to me who are desperately in need of houses. The 1 million homes that the previous Government built in the last Parliament are not enough. We will build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.